A Pendant For Your Thoughts
by Holytaxaccountantcountsmytaxes
Summary: Trapped. With the 'enemy'. Trapped. With only each other in the fight against all strange things that roam the forest. Trapped. With the 'enemy', who might not even be human himself. Trapped. With the 'enemy' - whom she might be falling for... Slow-building Dramione, non-human AU starting after 5th year. A normal school day, a storm, a forest, strange blue lights and golden orbs.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is my new project, a multi-chaptered story that goes AU after fifth year. This is the introductory chapter, with the actual "plot" starting from the next chapter on. More information at the bottom!

* * *

_When he was six, he decided that he didn't like being inside very much; especially when the bright, very inviting sun rays were drawing thick, ancient pillars into the dusty air of the library. One window was slightly ajar, but no breath of air dared enter the room._

_He put a scrap of paper between the yellow-tinged pages and silently shut his book, carefully balancing it onto the already shaky tower of books next to him. It stacked nearly as high as he was tall and that had to say something – after all, he _was_ tall for his age!_

_Pushing himself up, the boy jumped from the cushioned bench he had sat on, his bare feet soft against the hard, wooden floor. Stealthily, he padded over to the window, carefully peeking behind every bookshelf so as not to be discovered. He drew himself up onto the windowsill and opened the heavy window completely. The air outside was even thicker and extremely humid, and the landscape in the distance flickered like a fading dream shortly after waking._

Never warm enough.

_A small black bird passed by, flying towards the opposite wall of the mansion and landing on top of its roof. When the boy squinted _just so_, he could spot another bird of the same colour, bouncing around its friend and picking at something that looked like a heap of sticks and dirty leaves._

_In an erratic flutter of wings the first bird took off again, darting by the window at a speed seemingly impossible for such a small creature, first turning left, then right, and finally vanishing into the adjacent forest._

We could go after him, you know.

_The other bird stayed with their small nest for a few more seconds. When it left, too, the boy saw it. The sunlight reflected on something between the leaves, just slightly, but it was definitely there._

Gold.

_A treasure._

_When later that day, one of the house elves found him on the roof, clutching a golden Galleon in his small hands and feet dangling down the wall, he was reminded by mummy to _never put it off again, or I'll be very sad if you hurt yourself!

* * *

"Damn this thing!"

Hermione was sitting at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall opposite her two best friends Harry and Ron. The sound of Hogwarts' students enjoying their lunch over carefree laughter was to her a liberating song of juvenile innocence. After the Ministry's public acknowledgement of Voldemort's return last summer, things had been rather difficult. Not trying to stay hidden any longer, the Death Eaters' raids on Muggles and Muggle-borns had become ever more frequent and Hermione had grown ever more worried about her parents' well-being. And then there was Harry who had drawn into himself since the death of his godfather, sometimes sitting around staring into space, lost either in the past or in his future tasks.

But today, sitting amongst the loud chatter of her friends, Hermione felt like a normal teenager living in a world without the dreadful foreshadowing of a terrible war. Sitting in one of the most enchanted and enchanting places she knew, she heartily tucked into her meal. She had a bag nearly bursting with treasures – some of the more interesting textbooks – between her feet, which was a pleasure all in itself, and she gladly let the thick warm beams of sunlight streaming through the Great Hall's roof bless her with the last warmth of autumn. She felt deeply at home.

She and her friends were thoroughly enjoying their lunch after a horrid two hours of brewing a most disgustingly smelling potion, or rather _the_ most disgustingly smelling potion she had ever had the displeasure of brewing. The heavy fumes had seeped deeply into their robes and hair, blessing every inch of them with their lovely fragrance, and thus Hermione was anxious to take a quick shower and then begin on her homework assignment. This week, they were supposed to find out why _exactly_ the use of Dandelion instead of Mandrake roots would make their potion more potent as a fever and cramp reliever, but could on the other hand lead to some disturbing side effects like a permanent blue tinting of the skin in the abdominal areas.

"Why isn't it moving?"

Ron's complaining voice vibrated in the air and struck it gently in a dissonant chord, but the way the tip of his tongue was making a concentrated effort of wetting his lower lip – something that simply wouldn't have been on his mind in more dire circumstances – told her that nothing was seriously amiss.

And just so, when she was shifting her eyes to what he was complaining about, she noticed that he was waving his wand rather furiously at a small Chocolate Frog which was sitting peacefully upon its wrapping, which in turn was spread over the redhead's already empty plate, heavily wrinkled.

"Hermione, do something!" he pleaded when a small shower of sparks hit the offending object in front of him, gaining nothing more than slowly melting it. Staring at the offending little figure that was slowly dissolving into a puddle at its legs, Hermione asked him what had happened while putting down her fork and trying to suppress a grin.

"My Chocolate Frog is broken! I got it for Halloween and only opened it now, but it isn't moving at all!" As to accentuate his point, he poked at it with his hand, making a hole in its already slightly melted frame and leaving his fingers stained in a light brown colour.

"I have no idea how to help you, Ron," she replied with an as serious voice as she could muster, which wasn't serious at all. "Looks like some sort of manufacturer's error to me. Maybe the Croakoa went bad?"

Ron fixed her with a glance that told her just what exactly he thought of _that_ idea. Frustratedly, he threw his wand onto the table. "This never happened before!" he pouted, nonetheless taking a huge chunk of it and stuffing it into his mouth. His angry frown while chewing furiously on the chocolate – more than Hermione thought could ever fit in someone's mouth – looked more adorable than anything else.

Harry was reading the backside of the card, asking Ron if he could keep it since he already got the same one last time, which was of course unfortunate and he _had_ of course hoped that he'd get a new one for the collection, but _still_, you can't just let it go to waste...

Letting a fond smile creep onto her face, Hermione turned back to her mashed potatoes. She was glad how well it was going between her and Ron. After shortly trying to be more than friends at the beginning of the term, they had agreed that they simply didn't work, deciding to return to how things were before. To Hermione, everything about them was clear. Sometimes, though, she didn't know if Ron really felt the same way as she did, or if he still hoped for something... different. She briefly wondered if she'd get extra points if she mentioned the possible benefits of adding a bit of Silverweed into the potion.

When Hermione noticed the boys slipping into a conversation about Quidditch, she tuned them out completely and thought ahead on the books she would look into once she'd get to the library. The rest of lunch passed by rather quickly, and although they were all still covered in that atrocious smell, the day was going considerably well – but in the world of Hermione Granger, "considerably well" was almost always followed by something not-really-well-at-all. And more often than not that something went by the name of Draco Malfoy.

The three of them had only just left the Great Hall when they met him in a nearly empty corridor, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, seemingly waiting for someone. Probably his two goons, Hermione surmised. One foot pressed against the cold stones, leg bent, he almost looked peaceful staring into the empty space in front of him – until, of course, he heard them approach.

"If it isn't our beloved golden boy and his sidekicks," he sneered once he spotted them, everything peaceful about him vanquished and replaced by some kind of restless anger. When he pushed himself away from the wall to face them, a strand of hair fell into his face and he uncrossed his arms, brushing it back. He looked at each one of them in turn, eyes narrowing more and more, and when his gaze finally rested on Ron he blinked once, frowned, and then widened his eyes with a gasp Hermione identified as mock surprise.

"Weasel_..._ but... where is it?" was served in a way too high-pitched voice.

"Where is _what_?" was passed back through clenched teeth.

"The leash. For your Mudblood pet. So she can't run away from you... again." Score.

Ron's ears went as red as his hair.

"You..." he pressed through teeth now clenched so tight and grinding together with such force they should by all laws of physics have turned to dust from abrasion. Rolling up his sleeves, Ron reached for his wand, ignoring Hermione's half-hearted attempts at grabbing his arm while murmuring how he was above all this and shouldn't stoop to that level. He easily shook her off and began to raise his hand, but Malfoy already had his wand pointed at him and was about to utter an incarnation when Hermione heard a shouted _Expelliarmus_ behind her right ear. _Harry. _Better seeker, better reflexes, she thought.

There was a loud bang.

Instead of just disarming its target, the spell ripped Malfoy's robes completely apart, sending scraps of black cloth flying in all directions and littering the floor like solid raindrops. He was flung into the air and dropped down a few feet further down the hall with a somewhat muffled sound.

Harry seemed as startled by this as the rest of them, and stashing his wand inside his trouser pocket he rushed to the crumbled form of their school mate who had already jumped up again before they even had the chance to reach him. Backing away from them with suspicious eyes, he shed the remnants of his robes to the ground, leaving a trail of cloth behind. His tie was vertically cut in two in the middle in a ridiculously straight line.

"You'll pay for that," he spat venomously, turning around and stalking down the hall with the maximum of pride possible for someone wearing torn and tattered clothes. He went left at the first turn.

"I don't know what happened!" Harry exclaimed when Ron patted him on the back and congratulated him on "showing that ferret".

"I didn't even do it on purpose!"

Ron didn't seem to want to hear his best friend's explanation.

Hermione wondered when the boys would finally come to realize that their behaviour was childish at best, but decided to help them vanish the tattered clothes with a spell, anyway. Distracted by her internal and external scolding she almost didn't notice that there was something else on the ground, glinting in the torchlight.

* * *

Draco was rushing down one of Hogwarts' generic corridors towards the common room, all the while sending some of his most patented death glares at anyone who'd only so much as raise his eyes at his general direction. Even wearing nothing but rags and lacking the dramatic billow of his robes, there weren't many people that dared.

Fuming, he clenched and unclenched his wand hand. He didn't know what it was, but every time he saw that Weasel, something inside of him began to simmer and boil like a ripe potion. He was just so bloody _stupid_, it couldn't even be legal. And the Scarhead – how could he even dare to humiliate him like that? Oh, he'd wipe the smirk off their faces, yet. They'd never see what hit them.

_Oh, I'd love to see that._

He stopped dead in his tracks.

No. Not possible. He must've imagined it.

Shaking his head he went on, pushing through a particularly heavy oaken door and making his way down a winding staircase, step after step further into the shadows of the dungeons. To him, this infamous "darkness" of the dungeons wasn't only _literal_ darkness – after all, there were more than enough torches embedded into the walls to light everything but the darkest of cracks in the stones – but rather some kind of increased pressure on your soul and a more absolute silence than you could find anywhere else in the castle. A heavier atmosphere of sorts. The feeling was hard to describe, Draco had to admit, but it was probably the reason why many people said they felt goosebumps when they went down these steps.

Of course, that could probably also stem from the fact that the students from his house weren't exactly well-liked and the dungeons _were_ Slytherin territory, without question. He let his hand trail along the slightly wet stones, tracing every crack and mould in and between them, and it didn't take long for the well-known humid smell to well into his nose. Draco liked the feeling of the dungeons.

_It's been so long. And lonely._

He tripped over one step and crashed down the few remaining stairs, landing painfully on his back. Holding his breath, he rolled over to the side and immediately reached for his throat. There was nothing there. He spun around in circles on the ground, looking and groping into every big enough gap, but the only thing he found was dirt.

The blood was pounding in his ears and he heard a rat scuttling closely along the wall of the potions classroom, tail hitting against the stacked glass jars in a nearly melodic rhythm and how could he not have noticed sooner?

_Don't panic,_ he told himself. Pushing himself up, he hurried to the common room and up into the dormitory, stripping off his remaining torn clothes and casting them unceremoniously to the ground. He looked in every pocket, no matter how small, twice or even three times, but of course it wasn't there either. He would've never consciously taken it off.

Changing into more presentable clothes, he took a few moments to calm down and decided that he'd probably lost it somewhere in his fight with Potter. That was the only possibility, really. Just as he was about to leave and search the corridor where they had fought, Crabbe and Goyle came up the stairs, their arms full of food. "Hey, Draco, we thought you'd wait for us!" Goyle grunted, unloading his 'treasure' unto his bed, crumbs scattering everywhere."Not now," Draco muttered in response, leaving them behind and slamming the door.

_Why do you fight it?_

His brisk walk turned into a sprint and he might as well have flown up the stairs, down the corridor and the next and the other until he was back at the place were they had fought. Of course, there was nothing there, _either_. They must've taken it with them.

_Fight yourself?_

He might not get into the Gryffindor common room, but he would bet his life that he could at least find one of the Golden Trio.

Upon pushing the door to the library open, the heavy scent of old parchment assaulted his nostrils. Where normally this would have supplied him with fond memories of hours upon hours of most comfortable reading surrounded by thick cushions (his mother distracting Lucius to keep him from witnessing how Draco would read such "inadequate literature"), today he only felt a slight irritation at the stuffy air. Yes – sometimes, the way too old memory of how his parents had taken a week-long vacation in Paris during which he'd spent his time doing nothing more but read books his father would've thrown a proper fit over would force itself into his mind for a few short but relished seconds. Not today.

He found her in a secluded corner near the entrance, bent deeply over a ridiculously thick tome and scribbling onto some paper. Two more books and a few sealed scrolls were scattered all over the small table and one piece of paper near the edge was in high danger of tumbling to the ground. He sneaked up on her and deliberately pounded his hands on the empty space right next to the wavering paper with force, both pleased and strangely annoyed when the item began its inevitable trip to the ground. It landed face down.

Granger jumped so hard at the sound, it was a surprise that she didn't throw her quill at him. As it was, she only dropped it onto her paper, splashing a huge drop of ink onto it which quickly spread like spidery blue veins. When she snapped her head up, her hair was thrown into the air, tumbling down in a great gushing wave and breaking on her shoulders. A ripple of fresh flowery shampoo tore through the monotonous library smell. Sadly, it ebbed away far too quickly.

"What do you want?" she snapped with a voice that sounded as though it could rip something in two, fixing him with her eyes. Eyes that betrayed her surprise, no matter how much her voice might have tried to hide it behind anger.

"I think you've got something of mine," Draco said, keeping his voice schooled infuriatingly calm while ignoring the small flames of fear that had been swirling and steadily growing inside his stomach. He needed it back.

_Swirling, swirling, hypnotising._

"I don't know what you're talking about," she huffed, puffing her cheeks and sitting up straighter. An orange sun's beam, having managed the tedious travel through one of the mucky windows, broke through her hair in one golden arch.

_Feisty liar, liar, liar._

He stepped around the table, crossing his left arm over hers and poising his hand on her book. His other hand grabbed the rough wooden back of her chair. She wasn't exactly trapped – her right side was completely free – but it was a small cage, anyway.

_How easy it would be to just take it from her, would it not? Take it, take it, take her._

She didn't scramble away. She didn't even lean away. She simply turned her head, slowly, facing him but never moving a muscle in her arm, face, body. She was perfectly still as a porcelain doll, letting him tower over her without really acknowledging it.

"Are you trying to scare me?" Her voice sounded slightly humorous.

_No, because that would be _fun_._

"It's a necklace. With a small red ruby pendant."

He studied her face closely, looking for clues of recognition. She blinked once, but otherwise her face was calm. _Too_ calm for Granger. And there was the smell again. Only shampoo, no perfume. He saw her heart beating in her neck, _thump, thump, thump_, much faster than his own, engraving itself in soft flesh.

_Why don't you just _take_ your sacred treasure? _Take it_, Draco._

No. No, he wouldn't.

_Or _can't_ you?_

"Listen, Granger," he spoke quietly, not wanting to draw this out any longer, not able to draw this out any longer, "it's an ancient family heirloom. I... I wouldn't want to lose it." He added the stutter for good measure, being sure that it would be able to influence noble Gryffindor Granger.

It worked.

Her eyes began to soften and she sighed, retracting her hands and laying them on her lap. Draco saw this as a sign to step back himself and did just that, standing silently aside in a slight hover.

_Boring._

"So it really _was_ yours," she murmured, cheeks slightly red, while bending down and rummaging in her ridiculously huge and stuffed bag. "I've got it here somewhere." She nodded along to her own words in agreement.

How could a person have _so much_ hair, Draco wondered suddenly.

Then she had her hand outstretched to him, the delicate chain slipping through her fingers like sand, a glinting ruby in the middle of her palm. He took it quickly, clenching his fingers around it protectively, shortly closing his eyes to appreciate the well-known hum of old magic.

Only...

_Interesting._

He snapped his eyes open again, bringing the necklace close to his face. It _seemed_ unmarred, but of course that couldn't fool him. "What have you done?" he asked loudly, all pretences of calmness forgotten, letting his arms drop to his sides, his fist driving the chain into his palm.

"I didn't do anything!" she argued, flapping her hair over her shoulders and crossing her arms over her chest almost condescendingly. "It looks perfectly fine to me. Whatever is wrong, you probably caused it yourself during the fight."

Now, that was it.

"You broke it!" he shrieked, not caring if his voice sounded like a banshee gone wild. He took one step closer to Granger who only raised her hands in a placating gesture, raising from her chair. She nearly tripped over it. Only a small consolation. He furiously waved his hand around in the air, not really sure what that would accomplish, but it felt strangely good.

"Don't lie to me! It was perfectly fine this morning." Another step closer.

"I told you, I have no idea what you're talking about!" She flushed.

_Look at those ripe red apple cheeks._

"Must I remind you that this is a place of quiet and learning?" Madame Pince had appeared out of nowhere, standing between two shelves and resting her hands on her thin hips, scolding them in an exaggerated whisper. Granger turned beet red now, stepping around the table and mumbling intelligible apologies to her, fumbling around with some of the scattered papers. To Draco, it looked as though she was only creating more of a mess.

When she was seemingly convinced that they would behave, Pince turned around again and left after pinning them with one last dark glare, thick cloak billowing and bellowing behind her in fury.

_Spoilsport._

Granger raised her head again, meeting Draco's eyes. "Look, I'm sorry," she said after a soft sigh, stuffing her things into her bag, "but I really don't know anything about it. Maybe it broke when you fell down." She stopped her motions with a book on magical forest-herbs in her hand. "I could try a repair spell if you want?" Draco snorted a bit too inelegantly.

"I think that won't be necessary." As if it would work, anyway. Not on such ancient magic.

Something purred deep inside of him.

Granger shrugged, resuming her packing. When she was done, she slung the bag over her side, nodded to him once and left without another word.

_Swirling and burning._

The only thing left behind was the piece of paper that had dropped to the floor. Draco knelt down to retrieve it. Written on it was nothing more than a half-finished sentence about Silverweed, crossed out in one straight line.

* * *

A/N:

Please note that this is still a WIP, even though I already have a few things planned out. The Dramione (and the plot as well) are going to develop quite slowly (or as slowly as I can bear), but don't fear, for romance will blossom in the end! On the same note have I tried to keep the characters as in-character as possible in the beginnings since I wanted to have everything OotP compliant.

I appreciate all kinds of reviews, about anything that crosses your mind – concrit too! Especially. If anything pops up that sounds weird, just point it out if it bugs you since I'm no native speaker. But I try really hard to make everything the best I can.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Just so you know, I have merged the old first and second chapters, effectively making this the new "third" chapter by old count. Enjoy!

* * *

It had been a week since the fight between Harry, Ron and Malfoy.

The first two days after Malfoy had searched her out in the library, Hermione hadn't seen him in any of the classes they shared. Apparently, he was sick. Flu or something. She didn't really care that much, and when he returned to classes on Monday he was back to his normal slimy self and what happened in the library was nearly forgotten.

Hermione had been looking forward to Wednesday's double potions since she'd handed in the extra-long potions homework the week before. To her pleasure, Slughorn had been extremely happy with her hard work. Sadly, he had been a bit _too_ happy and had promptly decided to set up an additional project for the afternoon. They were supposed to find the Silverweed "one of his students" had mentioned in "his or her essay" to test the effect it could have on the cramp and fever potion by themselves. The proud look Slughorn had given her – and not Harry with his stupid book, mind you – had been enough to let everyone know that she was the cause for their "fun extra project".

Well, it wasn't as if everyone didn't already know her as the stuck-up, know-it-all bookworm.

They were supposed to go in three groups of four. "I want my best students to go together!" the potions master had said, not paying Ron any special mind when he shoved Harry, Hermione and – of all people – Draco Malfoy together, but the redhead tagged along anyway. Slughorn didn't seem to care that much.

That was how they were finding themselves at the edge of the forbidden forest on a slightly cloudy Wednesday afternoon, squinting at every weed hoping to finally spot the toothed woolly leaflets of Silverweed. Being well into November its yellow blossoms had long since withered, making it considerably harder to identify the plant. Hermione was just tugging at something – more and more starting to think that these plants just _didn't grow_ on Hogwarts' grounds – when she noticed Malfoy sitting on the ground a few feet beside her, twirling a small pointed stick between his slender fingers.

"You know, all of this would go _considerably_ faster if you just helped us like you are supposed to," she addressed him, throwing the infuriatingly useless weed in her hands to the ground and stalking over to him in the dry but squashy grass.

Malfoy looked up at her with his typical sneer in place, snapping the twig in two.

"What I do is none of your business, Mudblood," he drawled, leaning back and clasping his hands together over his head. His body was nearly completely engulfed in the especially long and pillowy grass that grew in large diameters around some of the thicker and taller trees. Hermione pursed her lips, but decided to let his comment pass. She always complained to her friends about their immaturity, telling them not to give into Malfoy's insults and just ignore him – she just _couldn't_ get riled up about it, herself. She wouldn't _allow_ it. And most importantly, she wouldn't allow him to _win_ so easily.

"I know you don't like working with us," she began in a voice she most often used to explain things to people she didn't think could ever grasp the idea by themselves – which was quite often, she had to admit – and she knew it would make him furious, "and I certainly don't like working with you either, but this is a project that our grades depend on, and it would be –"

"Look," he interrupted her, throwing away the broken stick and rising, leaving behind a body-shaped dent in the grass. "I don't care about your grades. At all." The grass slowly bent upwards again now that it was free of the additional pressure, and it did so in a way that reminded Hermione of a magical dance, or maybe like snakes craning their heads out of a box. It certainly wasn't Muggle grass. "I only tagged along because Slughorn was seeing us off in the entrance hall. One of you will find that thing anyway, and we'll all get a good grade. I don't see a problem with that."

He had taken a small step closer to her and Hermione thought that it was a bit _too_ close, because besides being able to count each and every one of his ridiculously fine and tiny and slightly feminine pores she could _smell_ him – and since the air was completely calm, that smell couldn't have been mistakenly carried over by some traitorous breeze. It was something she couldn't quite place, but it wasn't natural; probably some perfume so exclusive and expensive someone looking like her wouldn't even be told the prize by the seller. His eyes darted between her left and right eye in quick succession instead of staying locked in place. He didn't blink. She heard Harry shout "is everything alright?" to her from behind; Malfoy shot one glance over her shoulder and took a step back, raising his hands in a placating gesture before turning to her again. She also gave her friend a thumbs-up to reassure him of whatever while not being entirely sure why she was even doing it in the first place.

"Really, I don't know what's so horrible about just _doing _the assignments you were given! I won't just consent to being your work slave, like your Slytherin friends might do," she argued after Harry had resumed picking around on the ground with a big and mossy stick.

"Oh. So, maybe this is something else entirely?" Malfoy whispered, placing one hand on his cheek, the other above his heart – or rather where his heart would be if he had one, she thought. Her next thought was that this was a comment as sophisticated as Ron slurping soup and she could be glad not to have said that out loud.

"So maybe you just want me out of your group?" he continued, now in a normal volume. "Imagine what old Slughorn would say to that! Do you see yourself above working with a_ filthy, evil Slytherin_, because frankly, I think that's a bit prejudi–"

He stopped, wheeling his head around to the grounds opposite the forbidden forest and squinting at something. His hand twitched and slowly reached into his robe, to the place where his wand was stored. Hermione followed his line of sight, but there was nothing there.

"What is it?" she asked impatiently, half expecting some sort of trap from him.

"Did you feel that?" he asked in a voice completely different from before. Dead serious. She found that she almost didn't recognise it, lacking the usual arrogant inflection. He brushed a lose strand of hair out of his face with his free hand – he had long ago stopped gelling it back. His eyes held a vacant expression as though he were lost deep in thought and Hermione only just noticed how they seemed to be made of liquid silver.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, raising up on her tiptoes – why, she didn't know – but Malfoy only hummed something non-committal, raising his eyes to the sky. His intense gaze made Hermione's heart beat faster in anticipation. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, he snapped out of it and looked back over her shoulder again.

"Found it!" she heard Ron's happy voice. Hermione turned around to see him only a few feet away, and he was holding a handful of green speckled with red lines in his hand. Harry was following not shortly behind. Their footsteps must have been muffled by the grass.

When he was only an arm's length away from her, the world was ripped in two.

Ron was thrown forwards onto her, she onto Malfoy, and they flew to the ground, skittering over it and bending grass and flowers until they crashed into a thick tree, landing at its feet in a tangled heap of limbs and cloth. She tasted iron.

The ground they had stood upon just a few seconds before was blown apart by a second lightning that was shimmering in all colours of the rainbow, and mud and small stones poured down upon them like missiles, cutting shallowly into their skin. The second hole was next to the slightly bigger first one and Hermione realized that they'd nearly been hit.

In a matter of seconds, the whole sky had been drenched in black, dark clouds indistinguishable against one another in one messy smear of ink. Thick droplets began to fall, one after one, until they formed a thick curtain of water.

The three of them were drenched before they could even get up.

Ron was first to rise, helping Hermione to her feet and vainly trying to shelter her from the rain. She in turn tried to help Malfoy who only shot her a dark look and got up himself. The ground shook once more, but with less violence than before, and the accompanying roar seemed to be a bit further away.

The rain was so thick that it acted as a barrier effectively cutting them off from everything that was going on around them, and when she turned around in a circle to locate Harry she could only see a grey figure off to her right. She tried to get to him but was thrown from her feet once more. A loud crack. When she looked up again, Harry had already come shuffling towards her, his glasses in his right hand and wildly gesturing to the left, to the forest.

_The forest,_ he mouthed over the loud howl of the wind, _the forest. _She nodded and relayed the message to Ron by tugging at his sleeves and pointing into the darkness between the trees.

When she stepped in, everything went quiet, dry and cold. It was as though she had entered another dimension – if it weren't for the blood roaring in her ears, Hermione might have thought she'd gone deaf. Her breath formed small, puffy clouds that disintegrated in small, playful swirls.

Harry came in only one or two seconds behind her, taking her hand and expertly leading her a few feet away from the edge and into a small circle of four trees were she could easily sit on an extremely thick root. There was enough space for three more people – the forest was being surprisingly courteous, she thought, supplying them with such a convenient place on such short notice. She only noticed that Harry had been gone for a few seconds when he returned with Ron and Malfoy, both very sour looking, and placed them onto different roots as far away from each other as possible and sitting down between them. No one said anything.

It was even more quiet than before. The roaring in her ears had lessened to an acceptable degree, but her drenched clothes began to make her shiver in the cold. When she looked around she saw that the others were equally as wet and probably equally as distraught. Although – when she thought about it she noticed that she wasn't as shocked by the turn of events as she would have deemed appropriate for the situation. Maybe all this time with Harry had heightened her threshold of disaster to a level at which most things couldn't throw her off that easily. Or she just hadn't processed it yet. Both seemed probable.

When she saw Malfoy cradling his left hand in a slightly awkward fashion, she quickly said "let me fix that," and got out her wand, despite everything somehow proud to finally show off her mastery of the _Ferula_ spell she had gained over the summer, but when she pointed her wand at him and muttered the incarnation, nothing happened.

"It won't work," Malfoy said easily, his voice almost, _almost_ bored. "Enchanted items won't work. Wands are useless, too."

"What are you talking about, Malfoy?" Ron was the first to react, naturally, already getting ready to pounce onto the man opposite him every second. "What did you do?" Malfoy only rolled his eyes.

"I didn't do anything. This is a magical storm, _Weasel_, but I shouldn't be surprised that someone like you has never heard of that." He drew his nickname out in a long and pleasurable fashion, like one might hold a delicious strawberry in the mouth, turning it around and sucking every last luxurious drop of fruity juice out of it. Well, maybe _not quite_ like that – but it was comparable. Somehow.

And, of _course_, magical storm. The rainbow lightning should've given it away, really.

"What do you mean by that?" came Ron's still furious reply, but Harry only sighed and motioned for him to relax. "This doesn't help us accomplish anything." Ron backed down reluctantly and settled for silently glaring daggers at Malfoy.

Aside from their voices, it was still eerily quiet in the forest, and Hermione felt goosebumps on her skin that weren't _only _from the cold. The trees surrounding them were unnaturally high as was usual in the Forbidden Forest, raising up into the sky in long and mostly bare trunks without those little branches to climb upon, treetops cuddled together like sheep making it impossible to see the sky above. Regardless, the leaves alone shouldn't have been able to shield them from the piercing rain, and the brutal wind that probably still raged on outside should have at least caused a slight disturbance amongst the trees' crowns, but there wasn't even the tiniest of movements above.

"So, a magical storm, huh?" Harry said in a placative voice, punctuating the silence.

"I think the forest's own magic acts as some kind of shield from the magical thunderstorm," Hermione only _almost_ burst out, pointing above and happily relaying her theory. "I'm afraid it doesn't prevent the disturbance field from entering. I... guess it could be described as some sort of magical electromagnetic pulse, or something." Ron and Malfoy looked at her with a vacant expression, but she really didn't want to explain Muggle physics to them. At least Harry's eyes held a promise of dawning understanding.

She was only glad that at least some of the sunlight still managed to fight its way through the clouds.

"Well – do we have any idea when this storm is going to stop?" It was Harry's voice that had brought up the question and of course his emerald gaze was still directed straight at her. He had taken off his glasses and was rubbing them against the rim of his robes.

Ron scooted a bit closer to her on the root. Hermione pretended not to have noticed.

"I don't know. Could be a few minutes, could be hours, could be days." She discreetly shifted a bit to the left, away from Ron. "You saw how fast it appeared. I think it's a safe bet to assume that it could disappear just as fast and sudden."

"How could it have appeared so suddenly, anyway? I would guess that there should be at least _one_ person doing some kind of weather forecast."

Hermione only shrugged non-committally. Then she remembered something.

"You know," she began, "in hindsight, this explains a few things. If you'll remember, things _have_ been a bit strange this whole week. Some magical objects malfunctioning – your chocolate frog, for example," this was addressed at Ron, "and then there was Harry's _Expelliarmus _that got a bit too out of hand." Malfoy snorted slightly at that.

"I think those are all signs of the approaching storm. Although," she began to rub her chin, "I would have expected at least Dumbledore to figure out that this would happen. Or just _anyone_ else."

She was still thinking about this when Malfoy stood up, turning around and stepping between the trees.

"Where are you going?"

"None of your business."

She huffed, watching his retreating form with narrowed eyes. She didn't think it was the most intelligent idea to just run off alone into a highly dangerous territory, but it wasn't as if she'd tell him that – it wouldn't lead to anything, anyway. Malfoy had never been one to listen to the more intelligent solutions, she guessed, rather acting on impulse. She rubbed at her elbow. It was pretty red and a little bit swollen. In a few hours it would be sporting a really nasty bruise, she was sure.

"I don't like that we're stuck here with him." Of course Ron didn't and no one would have expected anything else, but Harry still shot him one of those apologetic smiles, shrugging his shoulders as if saying _whatever, can't be changed_. Putting his glasses back on, he remarked, "I still hope we can convince him to be at least a bit agreeable while we're in here." Ron only snorted _very_ loudly, reminding of a very content pig. From the way Harry was suppressing a grin, it seemed as though voice of pig had won against voice of reason. Nothing new here.

That reminded her – it was still _freezing_! They would have to make a fire to get dry soon, or she'd lose all of her finally perfectly straight and pretty teeth to violent chattering.

She was just about to voice her appeal when they heard a light thump and a short, surprised yelp served medium dire.

So much for intelligent reasoning.

Hermione got up regardless, running towards the sound which wasn't very far away. After squeezing through some narrow trees she entered another small circle, slightly bigger than theirs, which was encircled by high grass that was dotted with blue at the end opposite her – the end were Malfoy was standing, wildly swinging his leg around while trying to shake off a brown figure of approximately Flitwick's height that was clenching its tiny fists into his trousers, shrieking in a high voice.

_Bowtruckle_, Hermione's mind supplied, _and a very large one_.

She didn't have another second to reflect on that because suddenly she was on her stomach with something on top of her. Instinctively, she turned around to use her body weight as momentum and throw it off, but the creature was just as quick and instantly crawled back onto her. She pressed her elbow into the Bowtruckle's stomach and her left hand at its forehead, trying to keep its snapping mouth from reaching her.

She saw two sets of hands tugging at the creature's arms, but it was too strong to pry away from her, hellbent as it was on hurting her and biting her and clawing at her for whatever reason, mobilizing all its strength. Someone clenched at its neck to keep it still it for a short second in which the other person suddenly let go. That was enough, however, to give the creature an opportunity to swing freely and scratch her cheek – then it was hit by a branch right in the face, hard enough to stun it for a second. That was all Harry needed to throw it off its target, and when it landed on the ground it instantly scrambled away, admitting defeat and screeching loudly to notify its friend who swiftly let go of Malfoy's leg as though burned. Both ran back into the dark of the forest.

"Everything alright?" Harry asked with concern and offered her a hand, which she thankfully took. "Yeah, it's just a scratch," she answered, taking the tissue he handed her to wipe away the blood that was trickling down her face. Ron dusted something from her robe. "You, too?" Harry voiced louder for Malfoy to hear, but he only ignored him in favour of picking up the blue plants that had been strewn all around him on the ground. Without another word he went back into the direction of their meeting spot from before, nearly bumping into Ron on his way. Hermione thought that it was only for his own good that he missed his target.

"What's up his arse, now?" Ron asked. Harry only shook his head.


	3. Chapter 3

_The light reflected in dancing shapes upon the water, encompassing its inhabitants in a warm radiance. Their colourful bodies twirled around themselves and moved up and down and from left to right, pleasing the curious young mind belonging to a pair of curious grey eyes that were watching intently._

_He was only four, but the boy already understood that these animals breathed water just like humans breathed air. They had something special in their bodies for that. _

_Sometimes, he wondered if there were creatures that breathed earth or fire. It seemed only fair that all four elements should be represented. One Christmas, while he had torn down the colourful wrappings of his first play cauldron, his uncle had told him about those four important parts of nature. _

_The fishes were now diving to the ground and the boy couldn't see them any more, couldn't feel their presence either. He wanted to touch the glass, be nearer to those colourful and playful creatures. They were fun. His body was too short to reach the glass. He reached it, anyway._

_Pressing his face against the cool and smooth surface, the boy closed his eyes and tried to feel them. They were so small, their energy so fleeting, that he couldn't even be sure of their existence. The glass was cold, too cold. Turning his head around, he watched as small bubbles formed on the ground, appearing from seemingly nowhere, bumping into each other as they raced to the surface. _

_The woman's scream startled him and he lost his balance, crashing to the ground._

* * *

His body was shaking like an autumn leaf, acting as a force of nature on its own with complete disregard of the complicated work his hands tried to do. They needed to be steady.

Draco had searched for plants or herbs that he could put on his left hand. It wasn't broken, that was something he easily noticed after all those years of playing Quidditch, but it was still throbbing slightly and had swollen a bit. He could still move it, but the stinging was bothersome.

_Your arrogance is illogical._

He had looked around in a small perimeter, not wanting to stray too far from Potty and his friendship gang – he wasn't stupid enough to walk around completely alone – but he'd only found Shrivelfigs. Their leaves had long fallen off which was highly unfortunate since only those had any form of healing properties. With a stroke of luck, however, he'd soon found a few plants of Aconite a bit further down, huddled around each other in a tight spot between two particularly giant trees. Bending down two retrieve them – carefully, of course, he didn't want to get anything of the toxic leaves or roots on his hands – he had heard a loud thumping behind him and was attacked.

_It only hinders you._

In the end it had all played out, and now he was carefully plucking anything that wasn't part of the Aconite's petals away, because only those could be used as a simple pain-reliever. They weren't nearly as powerful as Dittany, of course, which could actually _heal_ his hand, not just numb it. However, Dittany was far too rare and most probably not found around here.

Draco sighed as an extremely violent shudder sent half of the plants he was picking apart flying to the ground. He was still completely soaked to the skin, and judging from the growing darkness in the forest, the storm was only getting worse. Or it was getting night. Time seemed to have died when they crossed the border of the forest.

_Not only you crossed a border._

Draco could smell her flowery scent even before he could hear her big feet stomping on the ground as though she was _trying_ to attract all sorts of hunters and invite them to an easy feast. Her hair still smelled like a gust of fresh air, like a fine brush painting on the canvas that was the inside of his nose.

Soon, her presence filled his every sense, but he chose not to acknowledge her. He didn't feel like filling the silence. He knew she'd do that for him.

"Isn't that Aconite?"

Predictable.

"Yes. Yes, it is."

Granger stepped around the log he was sitting on with three swift strides and planted her hands above her hips, rolled into loose fists.

"But that's highly poisonous! What are you doing with that?"

It's not that she wasn't right – Aconite was extremely toxic and known above all as the main ingredient of the Wolfsbane potion, which was difficult enough to brew without accidentally poisoning the recipient. Of course, that was far from its only property, but sadly most textbooks chose to ignore everything that didn't fit their ministry-approved guidelines.

He shot her a dark look.

"I didn't plan to kill any of you, if that's what you're afraid of."

She chose not to honour that with an answer and only began to tap her feet in an extremely annoying demeanour.

_Tap, tap, tap, like an owl at your window._

The way he saw it, he had two options: one, insult her, which admittedly was nice but also entertained the possibility – however small – of an indignant speech about morals or values or being kind or whatever, or two, answer truthfully and see the look on her face when she noticed that there was something she didn't know. Which was also nice, admittedly.

_Tap, tap, tap, with a letter in its mouth._

He weighed his options carefully.

_That would be five Knuts, please._

Then rolled his eyes at her.

"Small doses of Aconite had already been used in medicine for many years before it was replaced by herbs that were easier to handle. It's nothing more than a simple pain-reliever."

She looked at him as though the world had stopped turning. It was quite a funny sight. She had a small gash at her left cheek that wasn't bleeding any more but still flashed a furious red in stark contrast against her light skin.

"I didn't know that," she whispered, still looking at him with those wide, bug-like eyes.

_There's quite a lot you don't know, young lady._

Draco only snorted and resumed picking the plant apart. "I wouldn't have expected you to."

Granger stood there a few moments longer before sitting down next to him. Her smell washed over him and threatened to penetrate his every pore. He chose to shut it out completely.

"But how did you know that?" she asked in an exaggeratedly nasal voice.

"There exist other books than school books," he said to her slowly as though talking to a child.

Granger flashed a furious red. "I know that!" she deflected a bit too hastily, "I read a lot of books!"

He knew that too.

"It's only that I don't trust a Malfoy and enigmatically obtained knowledge."

This time Draco didn't honour that with a verbal answer and only raised his eyebrow at her which made her skin grow even redder.

After that, Granger finally seemed to have noticed how ridiculous her accusations were, because she tried to change the topic with a meaningless "that's probably why the Bowtruckle attacked you." She nodded towards the plant again, her fingers tapping a just as meaningless rhythm on the wood.

"Probably."

_Could've let me kill it._

The rhythm echoed a bit too loudly in the otherwise completely silent forest; her constant need for meaning to fill the silent, hollow, empty void expressed through nearly harmonic compression and rarefaction of air.

_Tap, tap, tap._

He couldn't get the picture of Granger the glorious owl out of his head, the newest issue of the Daily Prophet clenched in her mouth, growing more and more soaked with her saliva... His mental image let out a hoot and it was enough.

"Where are Potty and Weasel?"

"They're searching for firewood and looking around a bit while they're at it. Maybe they can find a more... cosy place."

"Why aren't you with them?"

"We thought that it would be safest to walk around in pairs at all times, minimum."

He arched his eyebrow at her.

"And they thought that it would be safest for you to stay with _me_?"

Something chuckled inside of him, a hollow, cruel sound, echoing in the bare walls of his mind.

She didn't say anything.

The tapping stopped.

The few moments of silence that followed again triggered her (female?) need to fill the silence with sound, no matter if meaningless or not. "Well, those Bowtruckles might not qualify as bad, but there are some extremely dangerous things in this forest, you know?"

_Like me._

"That doesn't answer my question," Draco ignored her input.

She still didn't say anything.

Then she was triggered once again.

"Oh, did you manage to repair it?" she asked cheerily in an attempt to steer the conversation somewhere, anywhere else, gesturing wildly to the necklace he still wore around his neck.

Draco looked down at it. No, he hadn't been able to repair it at all. But now that the storm had appeared he assumed that this was probably the reason for its... malfunctioning, if he could call it that. Even if very old, ancient even, it was still an enchanted object and thus would be affected by such a huge magical event.

"No," he only said.

"Oh."

He heard her shuffling next to him. She inhaled a long breath, seemingly preparing to say yet something else. He looked up at her expectantly, exasperatedly, when he was met with an outstretched hand.

"Look," she murmured slightly flustered, "I don't know how long we'll have to stay in this... _place_." Her face scrunched up into a pained frown, "but I do know that it's not really the most safest of places." She made a small pause. Then it tumbled out of her in one rush, words nearly overlapping, "I'd like to make a truce."

_So she's been _nervous_, Draco. How _cute.

Another hollow chuckle deep inside of him.

"A truce?" Draco only repeated, instantly slapping himself internally for sounding so dumb.

_Very graceful._

"That's what I said."

He looked down at the plant again, content with the parts he had managed to extract and throwing everything that wasn't needed to the ground. He pushed the petals together and rolled them into a small, tight ball between his hands.

"So?" Granger asked again and did a small wiggling motion with her fingers.

"You do know that I can't stand any of you?"

"I know. I wouldn't expect anything else."

He sighed and looked down at the still outstretched hand. He only felt indifference.

"Fine," he said, ignoring her hand in favour of shoving the purple ball into his mouth and chewing furiously, pointedly looking past her. Even though Granger had to retract her hand, those four letter were enough to make her smile a little, somehow.

_Innocence._

He didn't know if it was real. There often was no telling with her.

She rose, looking over to the small passage between the trees where she had come from. "We should get back to the other two. If we're lucky they might've already started a fire."

Her body talked to him as though they were friends, but he knew better than that. He cleaned his hands on his robes – they were still wet, anyway – and followed her into an even tighter darkness.

As they were squeezing through the trees along the narrow path, Draco wondered about the person attached to the bushy mop of brown hair in front of him. He didn't know why she had approached him like that. True, her reasoning sounded sensible, but that didn't explain why it was her that searched him out and why she tried so hard to keep up this kind of cheerful attitude, talking to him _normally_, like they hadn't ever argued or fought before.

A picture of their encounter in the library last week flashed before his mind, the golden arch in her hair exaggerated to the point of a halo, hazel eyes like molten chocolate. The frown on his mental image's face morphed into a knowing smirk.

It didn't make sense.

It irritated him.

They reached the small place where the Bowtruckles had been and Granger turned around in a circle once, twice, until she seemed satisfied with the big tree in front of her. She approached it swiftly, motioning for Draco to follow. Three steps into the darkness again and they reached a small game trail which they followed again up to a tiny tree on the right side that had a handkerchief tied to its branch. Granger untied it and pointed to the right, "it shouldn't be much further down."

The forest was incredibly desolate. Row after row of naked trees, leaves resting almost exclusively on their tops where they huddled incredibly close to each other to form a convenient shelter from the rain. On the ground were bushes draped by a thin blanket of fog that hovered constantly at the same height, only disturbed by the two people pushing through it.

Granger was a few metres before him and didn't look back once to check if he was still there while she avoided twigs and thorns. Draco didn't mind.

_Incredibly boring._

A tiny gust of wind.

A tiny spark of life.

Then a butterfly, blue as the sky had once been, nearly bumped his fragile wings against Draco's cheek. It was only a few millimetres away and when he turned his head, the butterfly remained, fluttering on the same height as his own grey eyes.

Sky and ocean reflected in silver and a slightly hoarse voice asked, "what do you want?"

The small creature quickly jerked from left to right a few times and then took off again, rising above his head, flying past him and disappearing into the void behind. Draco watched with regret as the colour was lost in the black.

A prickle in his neck.

A growl deep inside of him.

Slowly, he turned around back to where the butterfly had come from. An innocent row of trees, not as close together as the ones before, the fog as undisturbed as ever.

A small icy blue light in the distance.

Small as a needle pin, flickering on and off.

On.

And off.

_No, no, no, no, no._

The darkness around Draco seemed to close in on him, trees coming closer and closer until he was in a tunnel, seeing nothing but the light, the flickering needle pin piercing the air in the distance.

The silence fell heavy on his ears in an unbearable pressure, suffocating him.

The light glinted like fire.

_No, no, no._

Something inside of him wanted to run, wanted to take off, wanted to disappear, shrink in on itself, not exist. He felt a thousand needles prick at his skin and a million little electric impulses shooting through his body.

It was hypnotizing.

He didn't know why.

"_Malfoy?"_

And then it was gone.

"What?"

He shook his head and looked to the side where Granger was standing not that far away anymore. Her brow was furrowed and Draco found that she was standing a bit too closely, even though there was, objectively speaking, more than enough space between them.

He took a few steps back and shook out his limbs. The light between the trees was gone.

He felt suffocated.

"Are you coming?"

He pressed the heel of his hand to his eye, relishing in the little black dots forming behind his eyelids. The pressure on his ears lifted only slowly and he still felt a bit as though he were wrapped in wool. "Yes, I'm coming." His own voice sounded strangely foreign to his ears.

"Everything o–"

Draco knew that he should ask himself what that light had been, why it had effected him, why he felt this way. He should ask Granger if she had seen the thing as well, why it hadn't effected _her _and what all of this meant and most importantly, why it was so silent inside of him...

But he didn't. He only wanted to get away.

"Let's go. What are you even waiting for, Granger?" He pushed around her and hurried forward, ignoring her indignant intake of air that wasn't fully a gasp yet.

It didn't take long until he heard pointless and irritating chatter a bit further down. As he stepped onto a small clearing he spotted – and he was thankful for that at least – an already crackling fire with Potter and Weasley next to it, their cloaks draped on the ground around it to dry. Draco felt the warm glow on his skin and instantly felt better.

Potter and Weasley's conversation died down instantly and they fixed him with an accusing stare.

"Where's Hermione?"

"I'm right here!" Granger had come out behind him and waved at her two minions, "oh, I'm so glad that you managed to start the fire already!"

The two in question exchanged a furtive glance as their faces grew slightly red and the Weasel mumbled, "it was no big deal, no problem at all."

Draco snorted and let his cloak fall to the ground with a loud splash, his butt following suit right next to it. He leaned his back against a trunk and folded his hands behind his head while three sets of eyes locked onto him, one beneath black furrowed eyebrows, one still accusing, and the other...

He still didn't know Granger's game. He still didn't like it.

"Well," said person threw into the silence, shrugging her shoulders and clapping her hands together, "I guess we can rest here a bit. Maybe the storm will be gone soon."

She shrugged out of her cloak as well, rounded the trio to sit down next to Potter, not Weasley, putting the three of them effectively on the opposite side of Draco with the fire acting as an unofficial border. The Golden Trio began to jabber about unimportant things. He only stared into the fire. It had a hypnotizing quality on its own, almost like a lullaby to his soul, calling out to him and strengthening him while also smoothing the waves of his mind down to a perfectly flat pond.

_Embrace the warmth, let it stir the fires of your soul._

He had almost thought it had gone, lured away by the strange blue light.

Almost. But he wouldn't ever let himself believe.

* * *

A/N: Hi, guys! A new chapter just as the football world cup begins – finally! :) I hope you enjoyed it even though it's taken me some time to upload. I'm currently in an incredibly stressful phase of my studies... But, well, in light of the world cup – depending on how far the German team will get, I might be elated enough to write a little bit faster the upcoming weeks...! But we'll see!


	4. Chapter 4

There are moments that seem to be made for eternity.

This certainly wasn't one of them.

This was one of those moments you wouldn't remember in merely one or two weeks after, and not because they were so insignificant, but rather because you were too lost in thought to notice the world around you. What Hermione _did_ notice, from time to time, was the chatter behind her back and the flicker of a warm fire before her eyes. She wouldn't remember answering, but somehow she'd know that she did.

And from time to time her eyes would wander to Malfoy. That was the only thing she'd actively notice. The way he had his arms wrapped protectively around himself (she thought it was a rather pathetic version of a hug), staring straight into the fire with vacant eyes.

Then she would look at the fire again and resume her thoughts.

She thought about Malfoy. Not the Malfoy sitting on a log opposite her, not the Malfoy Harry had hexed a week ago, not the Malfoy that had harassed her time and time again and insulted her heritage. Not that Malfoy, no. He wouldn't be worth the attention, she told herself, he wouldn't.

Instead, she thought about the Malfoy with the look of pure terror on his face who had stopped following her to stare into the distance.

Eyes, however, that had been staring at nothing.

And when Hermione had addressed him again, she knew that he didn't succeed in telling himself it had been a dream, or imagination, or whatever excuse Malfoy would use to calm down and go on with his little act of life.

There had been times where she couldn't, however hard she tried, read that man, and understand why he would act the way he did, why he would insult her and Harry and Ron, why he would rather sleep in class than pay attention or answer those blasted questions Hermione was sure he knew how to answer.

This wasn't one of those times.

Those few minutes ago between desolate trees he had been too easy to read. _Fear_ was spelled out on his forehead, _despair_ directly beneath on his cheeks, _defeat_ splashed messily above his whole face. That he would feel such emotions wasn't what worried Hermione – he was, as a human being, entirely entitled to such. Objectively speaking.

What worried her was that he had shown it as plainly.

But no, she had to correct herself – you couldn't call it _worry_ exactly.

She'd rather call it intrigue.

She suddenly found herself between Ron and Harry despite having sat down on their left. She couldn't really blame Harry – objectively, she and her ex-boyfriend must still seem like the perfect couple. A couple which might only need a little shove into the right direction. And Ron _was_ great, really. He was nice. But... he simply was... he wasn't... _engaging_.

She sighed. The joy at having a fire had long worn off and now Hermione was just tired. Their wands still didn't work and the oppressing darkness slowly began to infect her soul. And she was bored. Bored enough to have tried at wandless magic. It had failed spectacularly.

She found herself agreeing to Harry and Ron's idea to look around a bit, again. They figured that it could still be a while until they'd be able to leave this place, and they didn't have anything to eat. Or drink_. _Hermione figured that there wouldn't be many berries or fruit to find, if at all, even though that was exactly what her friends had set out to do (with entirely too much enthusiasm than was appropriate). She was, however, fairly certain that they'd stumble upon a small pond or river.

After the minutes ticked by, one by one by one, she slowly began to regret that she didn't insist that Malfoy and her tag along. The idea of leaving the warm fire behind hadn't sounded too great, at the time. But without her friends, it soon began to grow too dark. Too empty.

The silence and lifelessness was suppressive.

Malfoy fit perfectly into this world, she thought, as they crossed eyes. The fire had nearly burned down when she'd caught him looking at her, grey orbs trailing from the frizzy brown nest upon her head (damn that rain!) down to the arms that were slung around her drawn up knees.

It must've been not more than ten or fifteen minutes since Harry and Ron had left, but it just as well could've been longer.

He was still looking at her. Not averting his eyes at all.

An icy wind made the sorry remains of their fire flicker.

Still looking.

"You know what, this is getting ridiculous!" she finally snapped and threw up her arms. "This silence. And why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm only retaliating in kind." Hermione shot him what she hoped was a puzzled look. He sighed. "You've been _staring_, Granger." Her face grew cherry red.

"I was only lost in thought. It wasn't on purpose." She fought so hard to let her next comment go, but she couldn't. "And besides, why would I be looking at someone like _you_?" She knew it was probably childish, but everything was better than that horrid silence – and she didn't know any other way to talk to Malfoy, at the moment.

"Does it even need saying?" was asked in reply, followed by a head tilted to the side and the raising of an eyebrow. The left one. Sometimes, it would be the right. Now, it was the left.

When he didn't elaborate, she met him with exasperated compliance. "Yes, it does, because I don't see it. I only see a spoiled rich brat."

Narrowed eyes and the cry of a strange bird from far away. "And I only see a pretentious witch who thinks she knows everything."

Hermione shrugged. "Fine. Have it your way."

That, as it seemed, didn't sit right with him. "My way? What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Hermione only shot him a look without replying. "I didn't even do anything before you started insulting me!"

"Well, you made it easy," she laughed, tossing her hair over the shoulder. "You know what, I don't even know why I stayed behind with you, _again_. Clearly, we don't have anything to say to each other."

"Clearly," he agreed. "Now it also seems like you never even _really _planned to follow your little plan of pretended civility. Should've expected that. Stupid Mudblood." The last words were only muttered faintly, but in the silence of the forest they were still audible. In Hermione's ears, they were as loud as though he had shouted them.

"You know what?" She didn't want to let it slide this time. "I know you always say these things. It's not as though I'm not expecting it. But what difference does it even _make_, right now, right here? _Especially_ here, in this forest, without wands."

His face scrunched into a small grimace, mouth set into a parody of a smile. "It doesn't need a wand. You should know that." His eyes roamed over her body. She clutched her freshly dried cloak tighter around her. "No," he concluded, "one could say that we're fundamentally different."

"That's no reason."

"It'd be self-explanatory, no?"

"If it were, you wouldn't always need to say it." She sighed. "I just hope it makes it easier for you to hate me, or else that whole mindset would've failed it's sole reason."

At that, he allowed a smirk to form fully. "Well, it _also_ helps that you're an annoying know-it-all. This is what happens to annoying people. It's only natural."

_Annoying people. _The memory flashed before her eyes. It felt as though something scratched at her insides.

"Whatever. I didn't even want to talk to you about this. I can see you're not quite ready for a sophisticated discussion."

His voice was humorous. "But I only said what you wanted me to, or not?" _Because you know it's true? Because you want to hear me admit to it? __Because it's easier that way? _Some things left unvoiced are not left unsaid. He chuckled once.

_Or maybe because you can see your reflections only in shards you cut yourself with. _

No use going down that road.

"Well, if that's the case, then let's cut this already," she finally snapped, again throwing her arms outwards in a liberatingly theatrical fashion and drawing a deep breath. Malfoy instantly sobered.

"I've been wondering," he said. Left unsaid what he'd been wondering about.

"Me too," she answered. Not telling either. She was certain he knew what she meant. She wasn't certain she knew what she meant.

The fire was drawing its last breaths, bathing everything in an eerie glow. It wasn't only its drawn-out death that had made the world grow icy around her.

_I cut myself open._

"Let's talk about something else then – why don't we address the other elephant in the room?"

"Which room?" Malfoy asked, gesturing around himself. "And, more importantly, which elephant?"

"You."

He laughed again. Everything Hermione said seemed to be extremely funny. "_That's _your chosen elephant?"

When he got no response, he only shrugged. "I'm no elephant." Then his face twisted into an ugly smile, as though reacting to an inside joke with himself.

"If that's the case, then you can tell me," Hermione dared. "What were you so afraid of back then? On the road. I could see the fear on your face." _Why did you show your emotions so plainly?_

"Well," he answered slowly, weighing his words, "this whole situation simply caught up with me. It _is _strange, isn't it? Trapped in this forest without a wand." She didn't buy it. "I'm rather wondering – why aren't _you _afraid?" _Why __don't _you_ show your emotions__, when you usually try so hard to have everyone __see them?_

Hermione knew that there was no use of pressing further. She chose to elaborate on something different. "Because I'm with my friends and I trust them. They're strong, and brave," he snorted, "and we've gotten through worse situation before."

"I wouldn't have taken you for the kind of person to blindly trust and follow."

"There's no blindness in it. They've proven to be more faithful than a Slytherin could ever be."

"Now we're down to this, again?"

They sat silent for a few moments after that. Hermione tried to dust some dirt off her shoes, but the effort was futile.

He shook his head, not wanting to let it go. "I don't understand you. First, you approach me and go out of your way to appear friendly and civil. Then..." He trailed off.

"Then what?"

"Then you try to bait me into an argument. Then pin the blame on me. Go to another topic. Start another argument, just to shove your stupid morals into my face." He shook his head once again. "What is it that you want?"

"I only wanted to talk a bit. You know, human interaction." Then, she added as an afterthought, "also, I was worried."

"Worried?" He seemed to find the entire idea of worry ridiculous. "I don't think so. Now you're just trying too hard to play your part."

"I'm not playing anything."

"I think you are. For once, I'm beginning to think that your friendly act has been a façade all along." He made a sound into the silence that she couldn't fully identify. "I don't even know what's _wrong_ with you."

To her, the words were a silent dagger hidden between velvet silk. Hermione didn't notice that she got up.

"You know what, I don't have to listen to this. I don't owe you anything. If you want to lead a lonely, pathetic life, then so _be _it. You don't even notice when someone tries to help you!"

This time, the sound was unmistakably another, if more forceful laugh.

"But that's the problem, isn't it?" he began, "I don't see what you're trying to help me _with_ and I think that you don't know it either. I think maybe you're just pissed that you don't know everything. That things aren't going your way."

He was still sitting, she was still standing. His face was two thirds shadow, but thos grey eyes reflected some of the light that crept through the canopy. They widened a considerate bit. He let out a small bark. "But I think that, sometimes, you need all _this_," gesturing wildly around himself, "Granger. Or Mudblood. Whichever you prefer."

Hermione didn't stay long enough to reply, only turned around and left. He didn't even try to stop her. She didn't even know where she was going.

After only a few steps, she felt childish and wanted to turn back. After three steps more, she didn't want to go back because that would mean admitting it. Four steps, stepping around just another tree, she was certain that she couldn't bear the condescending look Malfoy would most certainly be sprouting. Some steps more and she stopped. She still didn't want to get lost.

And she didn't want to face...

Shuddering, she slid to the ground. _It's only Malfoy_, she reminded herself. _He's only saying what he always does. He doesn't know __and realize anything._

She had sworn that she would never let any of those off-handed comments get to her again. She didn't want to slip into that role. But maybe...

_It's nothing._

Maybe she herself _was _the role she always felt was forced onto her. Maybe the comments weren't off-handed at all. Maybe he was right, without knowing, that she felt like no more than...

She tried to shut the thoughts out, putting her head on her knees and sighing.

Something warm tickled her skin.

Something felt different.

And then, around the limb of a dead tree came winding a blanket of white. It didn't appear that suddenly or quickly, but any change of scenery in this forest was entirely unexpected.

Hermione decided to get up and go towards it, slowly, letting the cloud of mist roll over her, even more slowly, its whiteness a sharp contrast against the blackened tree trunks. The air felt warm. She could taste water on her lips.

Something made her stretch out her hand, but it only closed around air. Now, the mist had grown over and under her head, blocking her view of the foliage.

Soon, she was surrounded. No use getting back to Malfoy now. She took a step forwards, a deafening torrent of blood streaming through her ears. Another step, and another.

She didn't know where she was going, but it couldn't have been far.

She met many other scarred trees until, after some time, she did just another step and her foot got soaked. Looking down, there was a weaving in the white fabric, shooting ripples across the surface. She bent down and dipped her hand into the water. _A pond._

Then she saw the orange glow.

It shivered in the distance, smeared into one big blob by the mist. It was at her side of the pond, a few feet away. It shivered again, vibrated, and let out a long breath.

_Slowly. _

Hermione rose as silently as possible, trying not to disturb the water surface when she retracted her hand. She slipped out of her wet shoe, not taking the risk of making a smacking sound. Took a step back. Slowly. Slowly.

She hit a trunk with her back and rotated around it, until she was hidden from sight. The creature let out a low growl and she didn't know where it was, if it moved, if it knew where she was, but she couldn't risk walking again, because she'd recognize that growl everywhere, after fourth year.

She knew what the glow was. And she didn't like it at all. But, well, it was to be expected – curse her luck that Hagrid _had _to save that last sorry creature of his creation. She was certain: that thing had to be the blast-ended Skrewt from the maze of the Triwizard tournament. It had to be. All others had died... it _had _to be.

She felt the air around her grow warmer and she hoped that it was only psychological, her body reacting to her fear. To her panic.

"Granger?"

_Damn. _

A sniff sounded from behind the tree and the shuffling of big feet. It wasn't far away. It was behind the tree. It was behind her tree, and she only hoped it didn't really know she was there. She only hoped it would be lured away so that she could get out of this hiding place and do... something.

She strained her ears but she couldn't hear anything. No breathing, no growling, no feet, no voice. The shout had come from behind her, of that she was certain. How far away Malfoy was, she didn't know. The torrent in her ears grew even past the size of a waterfall.

And he didn't even know the creature was here. Damn him and his big mouth _and how __had__ he even __found__ her at all_? Not that he had really found her. He was opposite that small open space, behind the pond or at its side, she didn't know. Somewhere lost in the thick white hot mist and then it hit her.

It wasn't mist. It was steam.

The blast-ended Skrewt with this dreadful fire-belly above those misshapen small legs attached to that ugly wart-speckled body must have conjured the steam. She didn't even want to know what that meant. If it was one of its sophisticated traps to lure victims near it... into open space... to use its fire and blast forward and tackle the victim to death...

Hermione was fairly certain that she had nearly become that victim.

Then everything happened at once. She heard a loud roar and a shout, followed by the sound of a huge explosion and a huge body mass shooting forward, away from her, to the other end of the pond. Not thinking, she let go of the tree and rushed around it, taking in the scene before her: the steam that had been whirled around to the side, out of the way by the Skrewt that had been rushing headlong towards its prey. Or so it had thought.

It hit its head against a huge stone and let out another blood-curling scream, turning around with a speed that shouldn't be possible for such a huge creature, facing Malfoy who was standing a few feet away, crouched on the ground, probably from jumping to the side. The Skrewt's front seemed oddly crunched in and something wet glistened under its small shell that sat loosely atop of its body, small droplets dropping down to where Hermione thought were its eyes. It hissed, like a scorpion, wiry legs moving around the ground as though dancing.

The fire in its body was reduced to a minimum after the last blast, but it didn't seem to want to wait and so it rushed forward, to Malfoy, who was running towards the water, only a few steps, back still turned to her, and Hermione wanted to scream, to do _something_, but she only managed to stretch out her hand and open her mouth, but no sound came out, and then the Skrewt was there, jumping towards Malfoy who threw himself onto the ground and tried to kick the creature when it was half above him, rolling to the side so that the Skrewt's back was towards him.

And then...

There are moments that seemed to be made for eternity.

Some, because they are so wonderful that you want to weep.

Others, because they are so sad and terrible that you'd also want to weep. Or die.

And then... then there were those that were unforgettable simply because they were so incredibly unbelievable.

And this was certainly one of the latter.

The creature let out a feral howl as Malfoy _grabbed_ the searing hot _thing _from behind with both arms, lifted it off its legs and _threw_ it into the water.

The Skrewt seemed to fall in slow motion.

Hermione still couldn't move.

When the body hit the tense surface, a _hiss _rolled over her, loud as a cannon, and even more steam rose from the water, creeping rapidly over the ground and shrouding the lone person still standing next to the pond in blinding white.

She tried to register the moment in her brain, hand still stretched out before her. The Skrewt could be heard thrashing around, letting out a pained and fearful and horrible and wonderful scream. It didn't take long until the silence.

Then, there was only the white around her and a horrible burnt smell that nearly made her gag. She could hear bubbles rising to the surface. _Skrewt. Dead. Killed by Malfoy. _The creature had probably already sunk to the bottom. The pond couldn't be too deep.

_Malfoy. Skrewt. Fire. Hot._

That thought shook her out of her trance and Hermione regained control over her limbs, letting her arm fall to the side and slowly putting one feet in front of the other. The ground of the small clearing was fairly flat and it didn't take long until she spotted a dark silhouette against the steam.

Finally near enough, she touched Malfoy's shoulder and tried to say something when she was upended from the ground, floating in the air for a short second before crashing to the ground, with the mist around her swirling like colourless ink in water. Two flat orbs appeared before her and only then did she notice the warm hands at her sides and the body that was now pressing her to the ground. Two flat _golden_ orbs hovered in the air above her, pupils dilated, eyes wide open.

She snapped her own eyes shut on instinct, throwing her head to the side and waiting, body taut, no room for her to fight, with the grip so tight. For what she waited, she didn't know.

_Eyes just like Lupin's. _

Whatever it was, it didn't come.

Instead, the grip around her weakened. The body fell forward a bit. She could hear and feel heavy breathing on the skin next to her ear and some loose hair in her face, slowly gliding down her cheek. It felt like her heart stilled for a second and then she was released, almost forcefully, and with it left the warmth. When she dared to look again, the steam had already lowered a bit and Malfoy was crouched down next to the water, body turned away but head turned towards her, eyes the same quicksilver they had always been.

"You startled me," he said by means of explanation. His voice seemed impossibly surreal.

_Yellow eyes, golden, feral, like a werewolf's. _

She drew in a shuddering breath and slowly sat upright. She still felt cold. She trembled. Malfoy turned around to the water and let his finger travel lightly above the surface, painting unseen art on the surface.. Aside from that, everything was silent. The white clouds parted more and more, disappearing from this world just as their creator had and the water threw dancing reflections on Malfoy's face and hair. He almost seemed to glow. It seemed ridiculously peaceful.

Her heart still beat too quickly.

She could still see the golden orbs before her, hovering above the ground. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to play it. Hermione stood up with a small crunching sound, and Malfoy looked up at her with a look that was entirely too without-words for her. She went to him, slowly, with shaky steps and sat beside him. Trying to go another route. "Aren't you hurt?"

He sent her an asking glance. She motioned to his hands that were now resting beside him on the ground. "Your hands. I mean, you touched and threw that thing into the lake. It was scorching hot."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't really touch it that much."_T__hat isn't right. _"I saw you. You touched it for a few seconds, palms flat against its body."

"It was probably just the heat of the moment, you know? People can do crazy things when fighting for their lives," he only said, facing the water again, face contemplative.

_Golden orbs... many werewolves can access their powers to a certain point even without the full moon... And with the magical storm..._

"What –"

"Let's go," he said and rose, heading towards a random direction. "We can't stay here all day. Better find Potter and Weasley."

_I couldn't have imagined it._

And to think that she had been so freaked out by Malfoy showing some damn emotions, only a few hours – if it had even been one hour! – before, that she had reacted so strongly because of some random words he had said that had reminded her of times that she had _long _grown past and forgotten about, that she had run off and nearly... nearly condemned one of her classmates to death...? And because of nothing. Because of a childish whim.

She didn't know if she completely realized it yet. He could have died.

_He would've died if he weren't..._

Malfoy was nearly lost between the trees when she simply called out "wait!" and hurried after him, snatching her soggy shoe from the ground and shrugging off all her doubts and uncertainties because she couldn't afford it. She didn't even deserve it. Probably.

He didn't acknowledge her when she fell in step with him.

It was strange, as they were walking through the forest, side by side, that she had so many questions swirling inside of her, about Malfoy and herself and everything, joined by memories she wanted gone and doubts about herself, her life, all glued together in a huge ball of chaos inside of her mind – it was strange, as they were walking through the forest, side by side, that she somehow found it in her to enjoy the silence around them and, for one short time since what felt like forever, she could appreciate the war in her head with a simple feeling of peace.

The silence didn't smother her.

They walked a while along small trails or larger ones or medium sized ones, pushing through trees and weed and even one or the other flower. Hermione didn't think they were even heading into the general right direction. Malfoy didn't seem to mind. She didn't know it any better.

She wondered what Harry and Ron were doing. The thought of her two friends shot a pang of guilt through her body. They were probably worried to death over her and searching for her like mad (and all the while blaming Malfoy for it all). She decided that it was entirely her fault. She also decided that it was now enough reflection and dissection of thought that didn't lead anywhere.

She was just about to tell Malfoy that she didn't want to go any further because they didn't know where they were going at _all _and there was a great possibility that they were only heading deeper into the forest, when said person raised one of his hands in warning. "I think I can hear something."

He looked around himself and then went left, peering behind the tree and pressing on. Hermione tried to strain her ears, but she only heard her own and Malfoy's steps on the ground, crunching little sticks to death.

"Ah."

Then she heard it too, and even felt some kind of relief.

They had to climb down a small elevation, using small roots as footing and trying not to slip on the partly wet mud. Down below, the ground was coated in pillowy moss. And there, next to a tree that had some of that moss growing at one of its sides, stood a centaur.

He had his face turned to the world above, eyes fixed on a small hole in the canopy that showed a black sky aflame with rainbow lightning. On the ground, the colours did not reach – there was only a diffuse light that flickered as quickly as a candle flame. _Or a TV screen_, Hermione thought suddenly, although such thoughts weren't invited.

As they approached the centaur, he turned his eyes on them, for a short moment. Hermione felt strange as the orbs bore into her. "Hello, my friends," he said as though he had known them all his life, "what are a young witch and..." now regarding Malfoy, he tilted his head to the side and pawed at the ground, "wizard doing in the forest?"

_He knows_, shot through Hermione's head. _He knows about Malfoy._

She wanted to know. She wanted so hard to know.

Instead, she asked, "we are searching for our friends. Two wizards, one of them with black hair, one with red. Have you seen them?"

The centaur's gaze had wandered off into the sky again whilst she'd been talking. "The storm clouds the sky. I cannot see the planets tonight."

So it _was_ night. That, at least, was one welcome information.

"Yes, that's the reason why we're even in this place to begin with. We were hiding from the storm, but we wanted to stay close together. We really need to find our friends again."

"Last night, Venus stood in a sharp angle. A futile warning of growing disharmony and imbalance?"

This wasn't getting them anywhere.

Hermione combed through her head, back to the beginning of third year, when she had visited Divination class for a few times... but they hadn't really talked about the planets back then... She threw a helpless look to Malfoy, but he didn't react to her silent plea.

"Maybe," she began, hoping that something would come to her while talking, "it is not a warning, but..." She trailed off, thinking back to the homework Harry and Ron would do at the breakfast table for Professor Trelawney. "But rather a, you see, a suggestion that it is time for us all to unite and overcome our boundaries." The Centaur still had his gaze lifted to the sky. "Maybe because Mars, as a sign of war, was set in an angle that shows submission."

Now, she was rewarded with a look that could've meant anything. "Maybe," the Centaur allowed. "What was it you were asking of me?"

Hermione let out a relieved breath. She felt as though she had solved the riddle of a Sphinx. "About our friends, two wizards. We had hoped you might've seen them?"

"No, I haven't seen the other two." He made a short walking motion with his legs, stepping to the side and staring intently at the moss covered trunk. "Although I advise you to caution. If Mars really stood as you say, there might be danger ahead. Especially for young witches and... wizards." He looked at Malfoy again. _Now, that was unhelpful._

"I should go confer with the others now, and tell them of these unforseen circumstances." Hermione didn't know if he really believed her, or was making fun of her. "I hope we will meet again." He inclined his head and disappeared between the trees before she could ask another question.

Malfoy let out a short laugh. "That was _great_, Granger, now they're going to have an emergency meeting because of that stuff you just made up." He looked at her with eyes that were nearly laughing, too.

"That wasn't intentional!" Hermione hissed, shooting furtive glances in the direction the creature had gone. "I was sure he'd see right through my bluff."

"Well, we didn't learn anything new but it was certainly worth it. We –" he stopped, seemingly remembering that he didn't really want to talk to her, or, more importantly, didn't want to laugh alongside her. Pressing his lips together, he turned towards one of the greenest trees. "Let's follow that one," and left. Hermione followed.

It was silent again. She felt a bit suffocated again. "Listen, about earlier... at the fire." Malfoy, predictably, didn't react. "I'm sorry." The words were pressed through clenched teeth. "I didn't want to have it go that way."

He still went on, not reacting.

"I just... remembered something."

A branch hit her in the face when she stumbled over a small root. She nearly grabbed Malfoy's cloak to keep from falling, but instead got hold of at a tree. While she was half-lying on the ground, he had already went on, and catching up with him again she grew a bit more impatient.

"You know, you can talk to me. Like a normal person."

He turned halfway around. "Oh, I'm sure _I _can." A smirk.

Her face flashed an angry scarlet. Maybe it was back to normal again, but it couldn't ever be.

* * *

A/N: Well. I'm sorry that my plan of updating more quickly didn't work out at all – it was completely crushed by being sick. I even had to watch the world cup finale from bed... No partying! And then it took quite a while to get better – but I know: excuses, excuses! As compensation, this chapter is extra long, although I'm now putting it up at night and... well... I hope there's not too many typos or other errors, but I wanted to finally get the chapter out! Also, I'll soon be living in Spain for half a year, so this story is probably going to have to take a break then. There's just too much to see!


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